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Australian Army PME (catch all)

This edition of the Australian Army Journal marks a departure from established practice in that it is a thematic edition dedicated exclusively to the issue of counterinsurgency warfare. Since the end of the Cold War military professionals, scholars and policy-makers alike have pondered the changing character of war. Consensus has proved elusive......

.....The pressing importance of understanding counterinsurgency led the Chief of Army to direct the urgent rewriting of Australian Army doctrine for counterinsurgency. In February this year he convened a two-day seminar to frame an authors’ brief to inform the doctrine writing team. This task is now being undertaken against a tight schedule. That is the reason that this edition of the Australian Army Journal is a thematic special edition. It also explains why we have expedited its production, in an effort to stimulate thinking across the Army about this important issue.

Accordingly, a number of qualifications need to be expressed. This issue is built around a significant number of articles expressly reprinted from foreign military journals. This does not reflect a want of confidence in the calibre of our own officers and soldiers. Nor will it become the standard practice of the Australian Army Journal, which is committed to maintaining its authentic Australian voice. We hope that Australian readers will read these articles with a critical attitude and ponder their validity in the light of their own experiences of current operations, before writing their own opinions for this Journal.

It would, however, be parochial in the extreme not to acknowledge the vast experience that our allies have accumulated over the past few years. For that reason we have sought the views of some of the leading experts in this field from other nations. We are honoured to publish the views of General David Petraeus and Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszley, whose contributions in this area are without peer. Likewise, the expertise of Ian Beckett and Stephen Metz—highly esteemed scholars both—are valuable additions to this Journal.

Furthermore, there is a distinct land bias in this edition. As Major General Molan emphasises, successful counterinsurgency demands seamless orchestration of joint effects. And the Chief of Army stresses that the multi-agency, comprehensive approach is vital to counterinsurgency, which requires more intimate coordination of political effects than other forms of warfare. The absence of RAN, RAAF, AFP or NGO perspectives from this edition does not imply a lack of recognition of their fundamental importance to effective counterinsurgency operations. However, this edition has been compiled within the serious time constraints applicable to the doctrine writers. In the interests of publishing this contribution in time to be of any relevance to the Army, we necessarily focused on our primary audience......

Historical Context

Australia’s Counterinsurgencies: A Brief History
Jeff Grey

New Challenges and Old Concepts: Understanding 21st Century Insurgency
Steven Metz

Back to the Future: The Enduring Characteristics of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency
Lieutenant Colonel Mark O’Neill

Current Operations

Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq
Lieutenant General David H Petraeus

Anbar Awakens: The Tipping Point
Major Niel Smith and Colonel Sean Macfarland

Counterinsurgency: still in the dark (Australian conference)

Via an Australian think tank mailing a notice on:

Last week's Chief of Defence Force Conference, 'Beyond Asymmetry: Counterinsurgency and Stabilisation in the 21st Century', promised to be a captivating bedfellow to the rather inconclusive contemporary parliamentary debate on Afghanistan.

What were discussed were the myriad challenges faced by militaries as they conduct their nations' interventions and stabilisation operations.

Most interesting for me was that while there were richly contrasting views from countries as diverse as India, Singapore, Germany and Pakistan (including the divisional commander of Pakistan’s operations in the Swat Valley) in addition to American, British and Australian views, a surprising degree of consistency and consensus emerged on some issues.

The writer commented:

Some of the more contentious and confronting takeaways included:

The doctrine that underpins a strategy must not be confused with the strategy itself: Counterinsurgency theory is not a strategy.

Counterinsurgency is merely an approach — a 'how to', not 'what to do' or 'why to do it'. The campaign strategy that describes the ends for which a campaign is undertaken (and indeed, the grand political strategy in which the campaign exists) are ultimately derived politically.

There was a broad–based appeal for greater, more coherent and coordinated civilian and police involvement in counterinsurgencies.

Counterinsurgency campaigns are simultaneously distinct and intertwined with others, so a pre-set and inflexible plan is simply impractical and doomed to failure: we must learn to live with adapting to events and, to some extent at least, 'muddling through'.

The motivations for people who rise up and 'surge' against their governments appear to be regularly ignored by analysts and policymakers alike. To achieve a more enduring result, greater emphasis must be placed on meeting the needs and grievances of insurgents — but when does such attendance to grievances traverse into appeasement?

A grim prediction that the need for counterinsurgency will prevail in a future characterised by three revolutions — a Europe irrevocably in decline; a ceaseless irregular warfare generated by an existential crisis in Islamic society; and an Asia-Pacific revolution in economies that will form the epicentre of the future world.

That counterinsurgency by definition involves engaging an adversary on a human and organic level, so that the many attempts to try to compare it with applied physics — where an action will result in a predictable opposite reaction — are flawed.

The proceedings are to be published and I will endeavour to update here.

The Aussies (the Army anyway as the RAAF seems to get it) still need to get their heads around the fact that counterinsurgency is only one small subset of the broader nature of irregular activity and the complex environment. Until they get this, they will still be lead down the garden path and through the looking glass of the truisms of COIN that don't necessarily apply in a broader context.

Australian Army's Land Power Forum

Land Power Forum is a public blog published by the Australian Army, and is designed to facilitate vigorous debate and exchange of ideas about future conflicts and security challenges, capability development, the future of land forces, and the utility of land power beyond 2020. Land Power Forum provides a discussion space for informed analysis, commentary, thoughts, and ideas among military practitioners, interested stakeholders, subject matter experts, and deep thinkers.

Military Police Contribution to Evidence Based Operations

I cannot identify a thread appropriate for this Australian Military Police officer's article, so it is here!

The author's explanation:

This post will discuss how Military Police could contribute to evidence based operations into the future; critically analyse what has occurred in the past and how we can use that experience to develop Military Police capability in this field across the spectrum of conflict.